Saddleworth Dementia Friends’ Champion, Helen Morris, shares some thoughts on dementia about ‘Humour and Identity’
Each Dementia Friends Information Session brings something new to consider and this month I am going todiscuss humour.
Some sensitive areas are covered in the sessions and one involves supporting a person’s sense of identity when living with dementia, which in most cases will cause some loss of memory.
In my work as a befriender, I have found I can offer better support when I understand a person’s unique senseof humour and this is an important area of identity which continues in spite of the condition.
It brought back the times I would be very ‘worthy’ caring for my mum, doing the cleaning, cooking, laundering and personal care, but then my brother would breeze in and tease her and her eyes would light up asshe giggled like a schoolgirl. They would laugh and laugh and then we all would.
But I worried… was it ok to laugh with people when they have dementia? It’s certainly not ok to laugh atsomeone who is feeling vulnerable and unhappy. But here was a key to shared and obvious joy.
So finding a person’s sense of humour can be a great way to support their identity and ensure they also enjoy the emotional, psychological and physical benefits of having a really good laugh.
Language and word searching when handled sensitively, with joint consent, can be a great source of humour and reveal the enduring wit of the person living with dementia. Grandchildren can be particularly skilled at drawing out laughter from a grandparent with dementia as they word-find together or discover something,totally strange to everyone else, to laugh about.
Understanding each person’s sense of humour and enjoying it with them would help make our Saddleworth community more dementia friendly. We can listen carefully to things that make people smile, try things out and note what delivers the gleam in the eye and shoulder shake of laughter. And with this we can make one morestep towards becoming dementia friendly through maintaining ‘Identity’.
Learning these skills now may help us all as we live our longer lives. By living longer it is likely that many of us will learn to live with Dementia ourselves or support someone else who is close to us.
For details of local Dementia Friends Sessions run by Helen please visit http://www.close-communications.com/dementia-friends
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